I'm ditching Windows in favor of Linux on my personal desktop. And so I'm looking for advice on which distro I should start with.
About Me
I use Linux professionally all the time but mostly to build ci/cd pipelines and for software development/operations. I've never been a Linux admin nor have I ever chosen the distro I use. I'm generally comfortable using Linux and digging into configs/issues as needed.
Planned Usage
I use this machine for typical home usage: Firefox, a notes app (currently Notesnook), maybe office style tools like word and excel. I also use this for gaming: Steam, Discord, etc. Lastly and least important, I use this for a small amount of dev work: VSCode, various languages, possibly running containers.
What I'm Looking For
I'd like an OS that's highly configurable but ships with good default settings and requires very little effort to start using. I don't want it to ship with loads of applications; I want to choose and install all of the higher level tools. Shipping with a configured desktop is perfectly fine but not required. Ideally, I can have all of this while still keeping the maintenance low. I think that means a stable OS, a good package manager, stable/automatic updates, etc.
Last bit. Open source is rather important to me. I prefer free and free.
Anyone have good suggestions??
Edit
I'm aware of tools like Distro Chooser. They've recommended Arch Linux and Endeavor OS to me so far. But I'm not ready to trust them yet. I'm looking for human input.
Edit 2: Hardware Info
I'm running on an ASUS ROG Strix GA15DK. It's just over 2 years old. The hardware was shiny but not top-tier at the time. It’s not new at this point but also not old by Linux standards.
- AMD Ryzen 7 5800X Processor
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070
- 16GB DDR4 3200 MHz RAM
Edit 3
It's official. I installed EndeavourOS! I got it to work without any issues. Yup, first try. It definitely didn't take me ~10 tries :D
Thanks for all the input all! Wonderful crowd here!!!
I just recommend Manjaro KDE.
It's very simple and easy to use. It seems likes it's designed to make transitioning from Windows as easy as possible.
Please do not suggest people to use Manjaro.
https://github.com/arindas/manjarno
https://www.hadet.dev/Manjaro-Bad
https://rentry.co/manjaro-controversies
https://averagelinuxuser.com/manjaro-review
Manjaro's maintainers have repeatedly:
Let SSL certs expire, asking end users to turn back their system clock until they fixed it.
Told users to make partial updates which often causes packages to break, including mandatory rollbacks on critical packages such as systemd
Held back packages for ~1-2 weeks to improve stablity, but does not do this for all packages, including the AUR, which causes dependency hell and breakage.
Rolled out an edit to a AUR package that repeatedly sent requests to aur.archlinux.org which made the servers experience a DDOS attack, impacting all users.
I am not saying this to hate on Manjaro, but to inform OP and others. If they want a stable yet fresher distro, they should choose something more like Fedora or Ubuntu. If they want something rolling, Arch includes an installer in its iso that is really simple to understand.
Edit: I guess I hate Manjaro for pointing out they run their packages horribly. I'm such a bad guy for that. Woes Manjaro.
https://manjarno.snorlax.sh hasn't worked for a while now, https://manjarno.pages.dev still works.
Nah, I've seen the hate-boner for Manjaro before and like clockwork, people like you feel justified in telling others what's important to them.
Pragmatism > all else. At this point, the Manjaro hate is just a meme perpetuated by losers and those who can't think for themselves.
Do you also tell people not to install Mint because they got hacked and hosted an .iso with malware? Probably not, because you don't see others doing it and it doesn't make you feel like you fit in.
Completely different ecosystems, not replacements for Manjaro.
Yeah, no. Anyone with a brain and some experience this point realizes that people who recommend Arch as a replacement for Manjaro should not be taken seriously.
Goodbye man. Gonna block you now.
💀💀💀
Gonna block you too.
Lol